John-Paul Flaim thankfully returned to The Sports Junkies in good health on Tuesday after a powerful two-week bout with COVID-19.
Due to HIPAA laws, The Junkies hadn't previously addressed the reason for his absence as — a testament to the eternal power of The Junks — they were inundated with overwhelmingly positive support and questions from Junkies listeners over the past two weeks. Tuesday's broadcast brought them some long-awaited answers.
"It's been kind of a crazy series of events," JP said at the start of the show. "A lot of people have been asking where I was. Well, I'm still at my mom's house. It became a COVID house. Unfortunately I had a really tough bout with COVID."
"The last couple days I started breathing a little bit better, so able to be back," he said. "I'm still quarantining, because my wife tested positive a few days after I tested positive. So I think it's been 14 days since I first had symptoms, which ironically was the last time I did the show. The last time I did the show, I actually received a PCR test which was negative and was feeling good about it."
"And then that night, it just hit me like a Mack truck," he said. "And I was in bed for 18 straight hours until I got up to take another test, which proved to be positive. So back from COVID."
"A lot of people have been asking on Twitter and I just didn't feel like responding," JP said, "because all while this has been going on, and it's hard to describe symptoms, my mother unfortunately has been hospitalized, and I kind of just want to leave it at that. It's been a really tough week, week and a half."
"Fortunately my brother was able to come back from New Jersey," he said. "He couldn't even come in the house as I helped my mom get outside. And my uncle is here from Puerto Rico, and they've been kind of helping with my mom, and it's a tough spot because I can't visit her, which is really, really hard on us personally. But we're just still quarantining."
"It's a weird spot," JP went on to say. "I don't want to belabor the COVID because a lot of people have it a lot worse, but I've never dealt with struggling to breathe. And it's a relief when you finally can take a full breath."
"Well the good thing is you were monitoring, you had good care. Your uncle's a cardiologist," said Eric Bickel. "You guys had a pulse oximeter or whatever, right? You were monitoring all of that. So you were in good shape that way. I'm just glad to see you back."
"So anyway, I'm glad to be back. It's good seeing different faces," JP said. "Being quarantined, I'm sure a lot of people have had to deal with it. It's challenging. Thank goodness for Uber Eats. I've never been a big Uber Eats guy in my home life, but here, a lot of Uber Eats, Target deliveries."
"How's your daughter doing," Jason Bishop asked. "Is she doing alright?"
"Thankfully Isabella's had no symptoms," JP said of his youngest daughter. "She's here in the house. Dylan tested negative. Dylan actually shared a bed with me the night before we moved, which was a few days before I took my first test, which was negative, and then I took another test that Wednesday."
JP was actually out golfing with EB's brother the day the symptoms began to hit, explaining that he felt so out of hit, he just picked up his ball and rode the rest of the course. Perhaps the best sign of a return to normalcy, it wasn't long before The Junkies slipped back into their old, joaning ways.
"My brother texted me that day," Bickel shared. "And [he] said, 'JP looks a hundred. He looks terrible.'"
"I was getting like severe chills," JP said. "And then literally when I got back to my mom's house that night, I dove into bed and I didn't get out until about two or three o'clock the next day. And I knew I had to get up to take another test, and I was able to drive myself to the test and I then just quarantined in a different bedroom, my brother's childhood bedroom, which has become my mom's grandkids' room. Which by the way has awful beds. The whole time I was like I can get through COVID, but I'm gonna have a terrible back, because they are the springy-est old beds of all time."
"Sleep hasn't been great for me, especially the first 7 to 10 days of COVID," he explained. "I would sweat through a shirt or two every night. But now I've kind of gone back to normal where I don't sleep with a shirt. But I couldn't fall asleep last night. I watched the Wizards win last night. They swept the best team in the NBA!"
"You must be feeling better," Cakes joaned.
As The Junkies wrapped up the segment, they shared a few more specifics about why they remained so silent on the issue for the past two weeks.
"Gotta take a break. It's great to see everybody back," Cakes said. "JP is back after an absence and it's good that he can actually tell the audience what he's been going through, instead of us trying to piecemeal it over the last few days, so he can connect to the audience."
"We were ducking it," Bishop said.
"Well, we weren't really ducking it," Bickel rebuffed. "The thing is we had like HIPAA rules. JP didn't really want to talk, so it was up to him to tell the story. Same thing with another guy."
"We were ducking it," Bishop insisted. "We just couldn't answer questions from the fans."
"Well," Bickel said. "But we said, 'Hey, they'll tell you what's going on.'"
"Well, look," Bishop said. "If you had a brain in your head, you kind of figured what was going on. Now, people didn't know about his mom, but if you just used your head, you knew that it was probably COVID related."
"Well it's good to have you back, bro," Bickel said.
